Manual page for EXPAND(1)
expand, unexpand - expand TAB characters to SPACE characters, and vice versa
SYNOPSIS
expand
[
-tabstop
] [
-tab1,tab2,...,tabn
] [
filename ...
]
unexpand
[
-a
] [
filename ...
]
DESCRIPTION
expand
copies
filenames
(or the standard input) to the standard
output, with
TAB
characters expanded to
SPACE
characters.
BACKSPACE
characters are preserved into the output and decrement
the column count for
TAB
calculations.
expand
is useful for pre-processing character files (before sorting, looking at
specific columns, etc.) that contain
TAB
characters.
unexpand
copies
filenames
(or the standard input) to the standard output,
putting
TAB
characters back into the data.
By default, only leading
SPACE
and
TAB
characters are converted to strings of
tabs, but this can be overridden by the
-a
option (see the
OPTIONS
section below).
OPTIONS
expand
- -tabstop
-
Specify as a single argument, sets
TAB
characters
tabstop
SPACE
characters apart instead of the default 8.
- -tab1,tab2,...,tabn
-
Set
TAB
characters at the columns specified by
tab1...
unexpand
- -a
-
Insert
TAB
characters when replacing a run of
two or more
SPACE
characters would produce a
smaller output file.
Created by unroff & hp-tools.
© somebody (See intro for details). All Rights Reserved.
Last modified 11/5/97
